So, you decided to use all your sports knowledge to bet online. If you’re not entirely sure just yet, that’s fine.

The following section will take you through some of the requirements and deal-breakers you might have when choosing your online sports betting website. 

List Your Sports Betting Requirements

Are you a big college basketball fan but don’t care about football or baseball?

That’s fine! We don’t judge.

But your sports betting website must represent your interests. There’s no point in choosing a sportsbook that doesn’t offer the sport or the league you’re the most interested in. Or maybe you’re a fan of all sports and need a betting website that provides a wide selection of sports and different bets.

The most crucial part of selecting the right website is deciding where your interests lie if you’ve found an array of betting sites you like but need to fund your bets only with PayPal or another payment system that will narrow your field of candidates. 

Take some time to think about it. With so many different sports betting websites, there’s no reason to start betting on a site that doesn’t offer everything you need.   

Choose a Few Sportsbook Candidates

After you’ve decided which sports you want to bet on and your other possible requirements, narrow your field and only search for the websites that meet your online sports betting needs.

If that’s too broad an ask, begin with the websites we listed in the bolded paragraph above. Once you’ve gathered a short list of candidates, you can further narrow them by reading online reviews for each sportsbook. It’s not wrong to be picky about your chosen website. It is your money, after all.

It’s also important to consider which kinds of bets your chosen websites offer. If you’re new to sports betting, you can select a few different sites and decide which ones draw your eye as you go. However, if you’re a veteran sports bettor or have a good idea of what kind of bets you’d like to place, you must ensure your chosen sites offer those betting options.

If you want to bet the over-under goals total on hockey games, look for a website that offers that option on every NHL game you might watch and bet on. 

Take a Sportsbook Website Tour

Ease of use is an underrated aspect of sports betting, but you should choose a website that’s easy to navigate and place your bets on.

Once you’ve narrowed your decision to a few choices, tour their website and how placing bets works. Make sure it’s quick, simple, and suitable for you. After all, watching the game is half the fun! You don’t want to spend all your time navigating a poorly designed website.

Sports Betting Bonuses and Promotions

Many sports betting websites offer special promotions for signing up, depositing money, and betting on specific sports and games. Depending on which sports you’re betting on and what kind of sports bettor you are, you’ll be attracted to some bonuses over others.

The free bet promotion is standard and one you should take advantage of. If your chosen sports betting website offers a free bet bonus, you’re given a—typically one-time-only—bet you don’t need to put money on.

The bet will be valued at a specific dollar amount, and a successful bet will return only the winnings, not the original bet value. Sign-up deposit bonuses are perhaps the most common promotion at this game stage.

The betting website will match a percentage of your first deposit or deposits. A 100% sign-up deposit bonus with a ceiling of $600 will double the amount of money you deposit up to $600, making your $600 investment $1200 overall.   

Other bonuses and promotions can include enhanced odds bonuses (precisely what they sound like), reload bonuses for future deposits to your account, and no-deposit bonuses that give you free bonus cash to play around with just for opening your account. Make sure to read the terms and conditions of every promotion so you know exactly what you’re getting. 

Pros and Cons

There are many pros and cons when choosing a sports betting website. Keep an eye on the promotions and bonuses offered, but there can be stipulations that affect how good an offer is. 

For example, many sign-up deposit bonuses require you to bet the bonus money several times before withdrawing the funds. This is to prevent people from signing up and immediately withdrawing their free bonus money, but it also means you might lose the bonus cash on subsequent unsuccessful bets. 

Other kinds of bets, like enhanced odds bets, can limit the amount you bet on one thing. Taking advantage of bonuses is a great way to maximize your online sports betting experience, but you must read the fine print to ensure you know what you’re betting.

However, promotions and bonuses are great ways to get started betting—and get a little boost to help you. Free money, deposit-matching, risk-free bets, and enhanced odds represent huge pros. You can account for the cons by educating yourself on the terms and conditions of each promotion.

Best Sports Betting Bonuses and Promotions

Now that you’ve narrowed your sports betting sites down to a few choices and you know how lucrative promotions and bonuses can be, your next question is probably

“Which sports betting site has the best bonuses and promotions?”

The best betting site for bonuses and promotions is MyBookie.ag. They offer a number of the different bonuses listed above across a wide variety of sports (including horse races), referral bonuses, and deposit bonuses. Our favorite among their offerings is the referral bonus for current customers.

All you need to do is refer a friend to MyBookie.ag to collect a large bonus percentage on a deposit. They also have daily promotions such as “Free Spins Wednesday” and others. 

What New Betting Sites Can Offer

As online sports betting becomes more popular, many new sites offer online sports betting options.

New websites often offer beautiful and lucrative bonuses, free bets, and promotions, so it’s always worth checking out new betting sites and what they can offer. Xbet is a relatively new sports betting website offering exciting promotions for new accounts.

On this site, live betting is an option—which certainly makes watching the game or race much more exciting! Xbet also features a wide variety of sports, including the NBA, NFL, and horse racing, which makes this new site hugely attractive to newcomers and veterans.

Like Xbet, new betting sites can offer enticing odds across a broad group of sports, whereas others—like BetOnline—have a clean, intuitive design and make sports betting online completely hassle-free. 

Bovada is also a new betting site that is one of the best for prop bets.

Bovada typically includes over 100 betting lines for NHL, MLB, and NBA games, and often more than twice that for specific NFL games. Like Bovada, new betting sites can offer clean visuals, live betting, great promotions and bonuses, and a wide variety of bets. 

The best New Betting Site

Xbet is the best new betting site available today. We already mentioned it above as a website that offers interesting promotions and bonuses, but it also represents the best overall new sportsbook on the market.

On their website, Xbet offers live betting on sports, welcome bonuses on initial deposits, sports rebate bonuses, a wide variety of sports, and an incredibly detailed racing portion with many options for significant events such as the Kentucky Derby. 

The Xbet website also features a great design that makes signing up and placing your first bets a breeze. Their combination of promotions and bonuses, variety of sports and kinds of bets, and their intuitive design make Xbet the best new betting site on the market. 

Sports Betting Apps

Online sports betting sites, including phone apps, can make sports betting much more accessible, simpler, and fun.

Using a sports betting app means you can place your bets while on the go, when you’re out watching the games with friends, without needing to navigate to a website. 

The ease of use and quick access to your sports and bets make sports betting apps attractive when choosing your preferred site.

Choosing a sports betting site with an app means you’ll never be too far away from your betting lines, information, and options.

Mobile Features

Mobile sports betting apps offer many different features. Half the battle of choosing the right site and app is knowing what you want.

Features may vary depending on your country or state, but the following list includes some features that are offered by the best sports betting apps: 

• Intuitive login and design
• Game schedules
• Detailed information about players, teams, and sports
• Guides for new players
• Options to watch games live
• Variety of bets
• Betting categories and options
• Payment options
• Game Summaries
• Bonus and promotion options

While sports betting apps will come with a wide assortment of features depending on your region and chosen app, the features listed above are a good starting point when choosing a site and understanding all the advantages of a mobile sports betting app.

The best Sports Betting Site App

The best sports betting site app is BetOnline’s app. It offers more than 30 sports to bet on and is super simple to use.

The app also features live betting in-app, which makes placing your wagers on the go more accessible than ever!

Live Betting; Unique Wagering Options

Live betting is a kind of bet that occurs after a game has begun.

It lets you place bets as the game progresses instead of before it begins, making the experience much more exciting! With this option, you can place bets on things like the total halftime score, among other unique live options. 

You can watch out for numerous unique wagering options outside money line bets, perhaps the most common in the United States, including over/under bets and parlay bets. 

Over/under bets involve betting on whether a game's combined score will be over or under a specific total provided by the sportsbook. 

Parlay bets are bets on yourself! Here, you’re betting on your other bets winning. For most parlay bets to pay out, every bet you’ve placed needs to win. 

The best Live Betting Site

The best sports betting site for live bets is undoubtedly BetUS. They feature live bets across numerous top sports, including the MLB, NFL, and NHL. 

Signing up for this site is as easy as counting to 3, and their “Last Minute Bets” options let you know precisely how much time you have to place specific wagers. 

More Options for Choosing the Best Site

We could go on and on about everything to consider when choosing your preferred sports betting website. 

In addition to some of the factors we detail above, consider whether or not you have friends using the same site and app, the quality of the site’s customer support service, and a site’s banking options when selecting the right site for you. 

Sports Betting Legality

Whether or not online sports betting is legal or not depends on your country or, if you live in the United States, on your state. In the United States, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, which prevented people from betting regardless of the state they lived in years ago. 

Now that the federal ban has been lifted, each state-level government determines whether or not sports betting is legal. Before the ban, only patrons in Nevada could bet on sports games. Check online to see if your country or state permits online sports betting.

We’ve found this helpful guide that shows which states in the United States permit sports betting: https://www.actionnetwork.com/news/legal-sports-betting-united-states-projections

Safety

Sports betting online is safe if you know which risks to avoid. Since betting online involves money, you must place your bets on secure, trusted websites with many distinct, positive reviews. 

Make sure you sign up with a legitimate, reputable sports betting site. The best USA sports betting sites we listed at the beginning of this article are an excellent place to start if you’re in a hurry to place your bets. Otherwise, sign up with legal, licensed, successful sports betting sites to avoid personal risk.

To keep yourself extra safe, install anti-virus software on your devices and update them to their latest versions. Use different passwords across websites. Use strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed or hacked. Update your passwords often.

You should never share your account information (including username and password), security question answers, or banking information with anybody, especially over email, text, or video call. 

Compare Sports Betting Odds for the Best Price

Compare NBA Odds against the best offshore sportsbooks

Moneyline

Moneyline Spread Total

Money line odds are The most popular odds in the United States.

These odds display the characteristic minus sign ( – ) and plus sign ( + ) depending on whether the sportsbook decides a team or player is a favorite or an underdog. 

Minus sign odds for favorites display the amount of money you need to bet to win $100, whereas plus sign odds for underdogs show how much you’ll win for every $100 you bet.

If you win on underdog and favorite bets, you receive the amount of your initial bet back and your winnings. 

Minus sign odds, or negative odds, means the sportsbook has decided that the player or team has a better chance of winning.

Therefore, since you’re betting on the favorite, you must bet more to win a payout of $100.

Plus, sign odds or positive odds, indicate that the sportsbook believes the team or player has less chance of winning.

For example, if the sportsbook gives the Tampa Bay Lightning +300 odds and their opponent, the Colorado Avalanche, odds of -400, you would need to bet $100 on the Lightning for a potential $300 payout.

You’d need to bet $400 on the Avalanche for a $100 profit, resulting in a $500 payout ($400 initial stake + $100 profit on a successful bet). 

Customer Support

Over the years, sports betting sites have bolstered the quality of their customer service and the number of options they provide to you, the educated sports bettor.

Being an effective bettor means taking advantage of your sports betting website’s customer service options. 

Every website is designed differently, so there’s not a single direction we can point you in to find your chosen website’s customer service center.

A simple method we recommend is using Google to find your website’s support section.

Type the website and “contact” or “support” in the search bar, and the link to the customer support section will likely be on the first page.

We also recommend checking the bottom of the website. The bottom of most websites usually contains a site directory that can direct you to different parts of the website. For many websites, including SportsBetting. ag, you can find the customer support section there. 

Ultimately, you should strive to communicate with a real person for the most helpful results, but if you need quick help fast, then automated services like password resets or self-help bots can get you what you need in a pinch.

Banking

Banking options are an underrated—but essential—feature of bookmaker sites and apps.

You must select a site and app to deposit and withdraw funds using your preferred method.

The good news is that websites offer more options than ever before. Listed below are some safe, tried-and-tested banking methods.

• Venmo
• Direct bank transfer
• Prepaid credit or gift cards
• PayPal
• Visa or Mastercard credit and debit cards
• Instant e-Check

Conclusion

The world of online sports betting can appear complicated at first, but—as our guide demonstrates—just doing a little research can put you ahead of the game and ready to enter this exciting landscape.  

Compile your list of requirements, including your preferred sports, kinds of bets, banking options, and how easy a site is to use, before choosing a few sportsbooks to join.

Keep an eye on the bonuses and promotions you can use when joining new sites. 

The best new betting site is Xbet, while BetUS is the best sports betting site for live betting. Make sure you make the most of MyBookie’s bonuses and promotions.

They have the best deals on the market right now.